# Accelerating Robotic Reinforcement Learning with Agent Guidance

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.11978 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.11978/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in RL for robot locomotion and manipulation, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods.
- Builds on 51 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Feb 2026.

## Placed in

- Deep reinforcement learning methods / [RL for robot locomotion and manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/deeprl/rl-for-robot-locomotion-and-manipulation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 51)

- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15818/) (2023)
- [Qwen3-VL Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21631/) (2025)
- [Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01691/) (2022)
- [Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16291/) (2023)
- [PaLM-E: An Embodied Multimodal Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03378/) (2023)
- [RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06817/) (2022)
- [Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12213/) (2024)
- [Code as Policies: Language Model Programs for Embodied Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.07753/) (2022)
- [Inner Monologue: Embodied Reasoning through Planning with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05608/) (2022)
- [VoxPoser: Composable 3D Value Maps for Robotic Manipulation with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05973/) (2023)
- [Learning Complex Dexterous Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.10087/) (2017)
- [SpatialVLM: Endowing Vision-Language Models with Spatial Reasoning Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12168/) (2024)
- [R3M: A Universal Visual Representation for Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12601/) (2022)
- [AWAC: Accelerating Online Reinforcement Learning with Offline Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09359/) (2020)
- [CLIPort: What and Where Pathways for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.12098/) (2021)
- [ProgPrompt: Generating Situated Robot Task Plans using Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11302/) (2022)
- [Eureka: Human-Level Reward Design via Coding Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.12931/) (2023)
- [Perceiver-Actor: A Multi-Task Transformer for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.05451/) (2022)
- [Learning Universal Policies via Text-Guided Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00111/) (2023)
- [MineDojo: Building Open-Ended Embodied Agents with Internet-Scale Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08853/) (2022)
- [VIMA: General Robot Manipulation with Multimodal Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03094/) (2022)
- [VIP: Towards Universal Visual Reward and Representation via Value-Implicit Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.00030/) (2022)
- [Efficient Online Reinforcement Learning with Offline Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.02948/) (2023)
- [ReKep: Spatio-Temporal Reasoning of Relational Keypoint Constraints for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.01652/) (2024)
- [Language to Rewards for Robotic Skill Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08647/) (2023)
- [Challenges of Real-World Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.12901/) (2019)
- [Residual Reinforcement Learning for Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03201/) (2018)
- [RoboPoint: A Vision-Language Model for Spatial Affordance Prediction for Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10721/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Reinforcement Learning (RL) offers a powerful paradigm for autonomous robots to master generalist manipulation skills through trial-and-error. However, its real-world application is stifled by low sample efficiency. Recent Human-in-the-Loop (HIL) methods accelerate training by using human corrections, yet this approach faces a scalability barrier. Reliance on human supervisors imposes a 1:1 supervision ratio that limits scalability, suffers from operator fatigue over extended sessions, and introduces high variance due to inconsistent human proficiency. We present Agent-guided Policy Search (AGPS), a framework that automates the training pipeline by replacing human supervisors with a multimodal agent. Our key insight is that the agent can be viewed as a semantic world model, injecting intrinsic value priors to structure physical exploration. By using tools, the agent provides precise guidance via corrective waypoints and spatial constraints for exploration pruning. We validate our approach on three tasks, ranging from precision insertion to deformable object manipulation. Results demonstrate that AGPS outperforms HIL methods in sample efficiency. This automates the supervision pipeline, unlocking the path to labor-free and scalable robot learning. Project website: https://agps-rl.github.io/agps/.